Urbanisation-driven land degradation and socioeconomic challenges in peri-urban areas: Insights from Southern Europe

Samaneh Seifollahi-Aghmiuni,Gianluca Egidi,Luca Salvati,Zahra Kalantari,Luisa Gaburova

doi:10.1007/s13280-022-01701-7

Abstract

Climate change and landscape transformation have led to rapid expansion of peri-urban areas globally, representing new ‘laboratories’ for the study of human–nature relationships aiming at land degradation management. This paper contributes to the debate on human-driven land degradation processes by highlighting how natural and socioeconomic forces trigger soil depletion and environmental degradation in peri-urban areas. The aim was to classify and synthesise the interactions of urbanisation-driven factors with direct or indirect, on-site or off-site, and short-term or century-scale impacts on land degradation, focussing on Southern Europe as a paradigmatic case to address this issue. Assuming complex and multifaceted interactions among influencing factors, a relevant contribution to land degradation was shown to derive from socioeconomic drivers, the most important of which were population growth and urban sprawl. Viewing peri-urban areas as socio-environmental systems adapting to intense socioeconomic transformations, these factors were identified as forming complex environmental ‘syndromes’ driven by urbanisation. Based on this classification, we suggested three key measures to support future land management in Southern European peri-urban areas.

Highlights

Land degradation reflects natural and/or human processes that negatively affect soil functionality and ecosystem services within local/regional ecological systems
In this paper we summarise and synthesise the key land degradation drivers and processes derived by urbanisation in Southern European peri-urban areas
While urbanisation has been closely related to economic development and demographic change, heterogeneous patterns and processes of regional growth and change reflect the uneven distribution of urbanisation, the subtle impact of demographic dynamics and the consequent implications for land resource management and environmental sustainability

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Land degradation reflects natural and/or human processes that negatively affect soil functionality and ecosystem services within local/regional ecological systems. Cities are characterised by intense built environment, industrialisation, and massive transportation of goods and people, all contributing to local heating, greenhouse gas emissions, and regional warming (Mohajerani et al 2017; Martinelli et al 2020) These issues are not generated by urban sprawl, mitigating associated risks and planning for adaptation are demonstrated sometimes to be more complicated in cases of uncontrolled urban expansion which increases sensitivity to land degradation (Egidi et al 2020b). Additional off-site disturbances associated with urbanisation of natural environments are demonstrated to increase the risk of natural disasters, such as floods, through more concentrated and larger volume of surface runoff (e.g. Kalantari et al 2017; Ferreira et al 2020), decrease inherent land capabilities to mitigate the negative impacts of such disasters (e.g. Garcıa-Nieto et al 2018), and increase soil sensitivity and vulnerability to erosion in affected rural areas (e.g. Rodrigo-Comino et al 2018)

DISCUSSION

CONCLUDING REMARKS